You are in His Presence
by Kaiousei
Summary: A small piece on Manga!Zazie, a speculation on the source and loyalties of a swarm of intelligent insects. Spoilers up to volume 11 of Trigun Maximum, includes graphic scenes.


Hi guys!

So I had a drabble meme on my LiveJournal recently (I'm too lazy to link, but you can request stuff if you like.) And my good friend Nelja – who I met here on forever ago – asked me for some manga Zazie the Beast. Now, for those of you who have watched the anime, Zazie in the manga is very, very different. He actually lasts for more than one episode/chapter. :P It actually probably won't make any sense to anime fans who haven't read the manga. This fic has spoilers up to volume 11. You have been warned!

**--You are in His Presence--**  
by Kaiousei

Humans were soft, mooshy, inefficient creatures. They scurried about in colonies without any sense of the well-being for all. For the insects, they made an excellent meal and farmed themselves fat with indulgence - so much like every other creature on the planet. Ultimately, there wasn't very many of them, and they were flabby things full of fluids. To be taken seriously, the insects had to have one. The first was a mistake, and old man who died as they practiced walking him down stairs. They then discovered that the youth were full of energy. They weren't very strong, but they could keep up with what the insects considered a satisfactory day of work. As a child, as well, most of the needs of the human body were provided by sympathetic adults.

Humans were predictable and uninteresting, but there was another visitor on the planet which the insects were much more invested in. The humans watched them, took and gave back to them like they were queens, yet they were expendable. Then there was the ones called Vash the Stampede and Millions of Knives, who walked about like humans yet with much more power and similar self-sustaining natures to their sisters. Vash seemed to sympathize with the humans, which the insects found puzzling. Knives treated them with disdain, except for those who committed to him completely, which the insects chose to do with their little boy body. Words were exchanged. Using them felt trite and unclear. Knives agreed to keep them around as long as they watched Vash, and while they watched Vash for Knives they also watched Knives for themselves.

All of the insects' knowledge about humans was proven true when the little boy body died after losing an arm and some of its torso while kidnapping the girl who spent time with Vash. They wasted no time on disappointment, declared the mission a failure, and found a new body. In fact, the boy had barely stopped breathing (sending a shock of terror throughout all of the colonies) when they found the other in a city thirty miles away. She was a little older, a little taller, and somewhat more efficient. They kept this one out of trouble, left her always standing on the periphery until their decision became clear.

Knives had begun taking the plants into himself and becoming a creature that was certainly _unique_ to say the least, but the insects were not ready to allow so much power to flow into a single force. They looked up at his constantly-shifting shape floating in the air, sensing the power he had at his disposal. _God_, thought the girl's consciousness with a shiver of awe. Not much got through from the host, so the insects took in the idea and rolled it around for a moment. "God" was the most powerful force that humans could comprehend. Something great, vast, powerful, terrifying, and potentially redeeming. They disapproved of this idea, and came up with a plan for this squishy human form to remove Knives from this power at once. The plants were respectable, the humans were tolerable, but the insects were there first.

Unfortunately, the insects had underestimated the competence of Legato Bluesummers. The loyalty of him to his leader was respectable, even by insect standards. The insects first planned to punish the human for turning on them, but the girl was not as useful as they had hoped. He tossed her around helplessly before Knives unleashed a spectacular attack that obliterated all of the little flying insects in the room. The little girl almost recovered herself at that moment as the mind bug controlling her held on from death. She was aware, feeling her arms pulling, her stomach stretching and ripping as he rend her in two. She didn't have enough control or enough energy left to scream as her torso released her waist, and parts of her that she couldn't feel fell into the dry desert air. Instead, her last horrific moment of life was thrust into the mind bug who controlled her as it died, and the force of it flooded into every other insect on the planet.

Humans were much more powerful than they had expected.


End file.
